Is FF8 really bad or is it a meme to hate it?

Is FF8 really bad or is it a meme to hate it?

Both.

There were some odd design choices. In the gameplay and story departments.

bit of both

It starts out strong, then it has a change of tone, then it gets incredibly strange.

It is a deeply flawed game, but a very enjoyable game.

My opinion about FFVIII? It's a brilliant but in many ways flawed game.

In my OPINION it also gets a lot of undeserved hate where the players are blaming the game for their own shortcomings. Some examples of this include people complaining about drawing when they simply could have just refined the useless shit in their inventory to magic instead, whining battles being nothing but summoning GFs over and over again when you are much better of fighting with your physical attacks and/or limit breaks instead, complaining about how easy/broken FFVIII is when playing through it using a guide or complaining the GF amnesia coming out of nowhere when it's constantly foreshadowed all the way up to the orphanage scene.

Also if people played the other FFs with the same mentality they seem to play FFVIII they'd complain about how you absolutely cannot gain a single level in FFVI until you get the +2 espers, how you absolutely must be at level 99 before leaving Midgar in FFVII or how it's an absolute necessary to get Excalibur II in FFIX.
No one is forcing you to Draw for 100 of every magic in every battle. No one is forcing you to fight by summoning GFs over and over again. No one is forcing you to spend ages playing the card game to get Lionheart on disc 1. No one is forcing you to break the junction system. Etc... all of those are things YOU did voluntarily did yourself to make your game less fun.

That said FFVIII is an OK game if you just play through it normally (like you'd do with any other FF game) but is still one of the weaker entries in the series.

This. Here is a protip: Play FFVIII with a mindset of it being a unintentional parody of the JRPG genre and it becomes fun as fuck.

Squal is a silly name

FF8 is the MGS2 of Final Fantasy

It has some glaring flaws but it is still the best final fantasy game (not saying the others are bad, most are great)

...

No it's not, FF8's story goes to complete shit after disc 1, hardly anyone defends where the story goes unlike MGS2.

Maybe I just like all the sucky FFs. I love FFXIII and FFVIII. FFVIII, depspite some strange mechanics, is filled with insanely fun boss battles. One of my favorite things about both of those games are the very long, drawn out boss battles that require you stick to a good strategy to win. As far as the story goes, I'm on the final boss fight and have enjoyed it a lot. There are definitely some very strange, cheesy, and unbelievable parts, but for the most part is still very good, despite a very slow and boring first hour and half or so. Music tends to be top notch and the cut-scenes are great. To be honest I give both VIII and XIII 8.5/10

Its flawed but I like it. Uematsu's composition knocks it out of the park as usual.

Its unironically my favourite final fantasy

It's not THE worst. But still bad.

>blue fields
>balamb garden
>fishermans horizon
>waltz the moon

>The man with the machine gun

I recall hating 8 back in the day. gave it a whirl again and the only issue i still had was the plot being fucking retarded and the summon animations taking FORFUCKINGEVER

(Same with 12 that new job system and x2 or x4 speed has me really enjoying it.

>The Extreme

>FF8 is the MGS2 of Final Fantasy

how so?

MGS2's story also goes to complete shit

It feels like large sections of the plot were cut from the game, but it's alright

you mean its shit? mgs 3 is the ffvii of ff

>FF8 is the MGS2 of Final Fantasy

you mean a crappy follow-up game that tried to be "deep" and falls flat on its face and full of shitty characters & twists?

MGS3 has camo and injuries to slow shit down but ff9 just uses the slowest combat animations known to mankind

I both love and hate the game. The setting, music, exploring the world, and even the battle system was great to me. I don't like the party, though.

Squall is fine. I liked seeing his inner dialogue throughout the game but I couldn't get attached to the other guys. Laguna and his group were great. I liked Seifer and his friends. I wish Seifer could've woken up mid-game and they could've joined the party. I hate Rinoa with everything in me. She is such a huge focus of the game and that almost ruins the whole experience for me. If there was a way to take her out of the story, I'd like the game so much more.

It's a bit of both.
Objectively speaking, the story is a fucking mess.
The combat system is dumb but it's still enjoyable.

Subjectively though, most of the hate came from nostalgiafags whose first FF was 7 and had high expectations for 8.

What an amazing, unique setting and atmosphere this game has. The mechanical shortcomings and kinda nonsensicle time travel plotlines dont even matter to me, the vibe/artstyle/music are 10/10. It is a jrpg essential. Perfect at all the things I'd assume people play these types of games for. Also this Game has some of the best battles in any jrpg, and the fucking finale/ending are so fucking good it has ruined other games and even most movie endings for me. It conjures every emotion a human can feel

It's a meme to hate it. Just play the god damn game, it's pretty great.

>it's pretty great.

only if you draw all the time and never level up

This is the opposite of what you should do.

>This is the opposite of what you should do.

FF8 has levelscaling so leveling is a bad idea

It's okay, the hate is extremely exaggerated. It does feel unfinished and the draw function is weird, but it's all serviceable. It's at least better than some of the earlier entries, as well as X/X-2, XII, and XIII/-2/-3.

VIII is also better than XV

I think people are way too focused in the "you should never level up" thing. It really isn't as bad as people make it out to be as higher level enemies also have better stuff to Draw, steal and/or to get as drops. However there is absolutely no reason to level past lv.40 as that is when the stuff you get from enemies doesn't get any better any more but WHY would you want to level past lv40 to begin with at that point you should already be at the last save point of the game assuming you play through the game normally.

>However there is absolutely no reason to level past lv.40

or level at all

going out of your way to NOT level and to draw everything is just autistic min/maxing that will ruin the game for you. You don't grind to level 99 on the first battle of ff7

I keep forgetting XV is a FF game, honestly. But you're right, my bad.

I'm a huge FF VIII fanboy because it was my first Final Fantasy and the first "traditional" role-playing game I've played.

The gameplay is completely imbalanced garbage. You're either severely overpowered or underpowered. The idea of junctioning spells to your stats is great, but it has been executed horribly and doesn't work at all.
It's fun to break the game, though. There are so many ways to get creative with the system and get very powerful spells early on (mostly through Triple Triad). If you take the game at face value its gameplay is bad, if you like to experiment it's lots of fun.

The story is great until it jumps the shark, but this goes for almost every Final Fantasy. CD 1 is the best, CD2 is kinda alright, CD3 is weird, somewhat interesting and somewhat cringy and CD4 shouldn't exist.

OST is beautiful, setting is great, characters are likeable and Triple Triad is the GOAT minigame. If you played it as a kid I guarantee you dreamed of going to Balamb Garden.

Yeah, overrated babbys first shit while the magnum opus that is MGS2 is ignored for muh Snek feels.

>You don't grind to level 99 on the first battle of ff7

No but FF7 doesn't have every god damned enemy scale to your level.

Raiden is shit even if he didn't replace Snake. Raiden is still a whiny bitch.

A bit of both. Given that FF8 is my favorite final fantasy I do understand some of the hate. Lots of people hate it after playing it wrong.

Not exactly. The magic stones you get after battle changes and your magic stat affects the amount you can draw per well draw. Anyways with the magic stones, getting better, you refined them into magic which you then junctioned.

Lots of people autistically spent half hours drawing 99 x 3 from every enemy they came across and killed any enjoyment when the game gave you a kinetic way to avoid that altogether.

>Raiden is shit even if he didn't replace Snake. Raiden is still a whiny bitch.
Wow, you noticed that? Great job user.

>No but FF7 doesn't have every god damned enemy scale to your level.
True, but Sephiroth scaled depending on how many idiots you had at max level.

Anyways FF8's bosses had scaling caps.

It's pretty bad, but it has the second best soundtrack in the entire series.
The best soundtrack is FFXIII-2's

>Lots of people autistically spent half hours drawing 99 x 3 from every enemy they came across and killed any enjoyment when the game gave you a kinetic way to avoid that altogether.

because it was the only way for me to get spells.

Never touched the refine item skills because I dismissed those as "I need specific items" and fuck the card game. Cheating AI assholes

It's not a very good game.
Even one of the only things people like, Triple Triad, is swamped by stupid game design.

I liked the refine system since lots of shit fed back into it. And I have a special place in my heart for triple triad until "the random rule has spread to this region"

>play FFVIII for the first time when it came out in 1999
>I found it "meh" but didn't hate it

>play through it again couple of months later
>figure out how to refine magic
>have a much better time with the game

>play through it again couple of years later
>figure shitloads of story related things out
>have even better time with the game

>play through it one more time last year
>still find out new thing both gameplay- and storywise
>apart from the "romance" between Squall and Rinoa annoying the fuck out of me now I had a great time with the game and it honestly has become one of my favorite FF games over the years

>Sephiroth scaled depending on how many idiots you had at max level.
I don't think that was the case. If I remember, the final boss' difficulty scaled at how quickly you killed Jenova's final form.

>No but FF7 doesn't have every god damned enemy scale to your level.
What is the problem with ff8's level scaling other than "you are making the game more difficult for yourself by leveling?"
By not grinding to max level on the first battle in FF7 you are making the game more difficult for yourself.

There is no real reason to avoid leveling up at all unless you go full autist about min-maxing either.

problem is that in a JRPG, you level normally as you advance through the game.

this is punishing you in FF8 due to levelscaling

I really don't like the Junctioning/Magic system. To me it severely limits your ability to use the magic because its essential to your character's strength.

And all you have to do is Junction 99 Waters to Squall and you can one shot pretty much everything for most of the game.

Not leveling was actually a planned decision, which is why bosses give no xp. Players who wanted to experience FFVIII for the story were allowed to whereas if you played it normally, the gameplay fed into that in the form of item drops and magic able to be drawn.

However this comes with a bad:
For most people it's the case of "because you can make the game easier, you should". And so people now think that not leveling it up is the only way to play when it was never supposed to be the that way.

>And so people now think that not leveling it up is the only way to play when it was never supposed to be the that way.

except leveling can make the game impossible. I made that robot boss in disc 3 impossible due to leveling up because it kept on kicking my ass

>people complain about having to grind for levels in JRPGs
>people also complain about games that don't reward you for grinding for levels

>people whine and bitch about FF8 having level scaling
>people NEVER EVER complain about FFT's random encounter also having level scaling

I'll never understand you fags. Seriously what the hell do you guys actually want?

FFT was a good game (unlike 8) so it was overlooked

It's not punishing you, it's just raising the difficulty as the game goes on. Which is what every game in the history of time has done. Playing normally you also get more GFs and tools to deal with these challenges as you go.

Is SMB3 punishing you for advancing by making world 8 harder than world 1?

The whole point is you don't HAVE to abstain from leveling and make the game as easy as possible. If the effects were the opposite your autistic brain wouldn't be triggered by it. It's kind of like in MMORPGs where devs have a choice between implementing a fatigued exp penalty and a rested exp bonus - they're the same fucking thing, they just have different names and tingle the autistic part of your brain differently.

People expect the same or similar mechanics in successive games in the same mainline series. Especially when the change is so drastically different from the previous game while the tone and setting remain fairly similar.

>except leveling can make the game impossible.
You can never make the game impossible. I assure you.

Anyways disc 3 is the type-8 yes? IIRC you have plenty of time inside lunatic pandora and before it to completely level up. And because that thing is a glass canon you can fuck it up with either an aura or some thundaga.

What's more, as it's a boss, it enjoys the same ability to be hindered by level caps. Hell even when you're stuck on ragnarok with Rinoa and you don't have magic junctioned to help you fight the bosses you can still get that magic from the fucker near the savepoint.

There is a goddamn middle ground, don't even try to act like there isn't. The game should reward you for progressing, but systems like FF8s can end up punishing players and then you'll end up grinding for Magic to Junction anyway.

Grinding breaks the flow of the gameplay and the story. Very rarely do players want to stop progressing through the story or levels just to run around in circles fighting enemies for an hour or two.

FF8 is a game where you saw Square experiment in trying to change a lot of the popular RPG formula at the time, and ultimately failing in nearly every attempt.
Replacing equipment/weapons with the junction system.
The removal of MP for magic stock.
The removal of level grind with the level scaling.
The game ultimately suffered, because combining all of these brought about one of the most broken RPGS imaginable.

>it's just raising the difficulty as the game goes on.

other RPGs do that by adding newer, stronger, enemies in new areas and not resort to level scaling

>Anyways disc 3 is the type-8 yes?
the thingy in the Lunatic Pandora. Still lost at level 100 so I used a Gameshark. Was not aware of level scaling at the time.

It doesn't scale to 100. AFAIK the highest things can go in lunatic pandora is like 60something. I'll double check though, I could be wrong

>other RPGs do that by adding newer, stronger, enemies in new areas and not resort to level scaling
turns out if you play normally and don't just sit there grinding then it both scales the levels and adds new enemies
>captcha trying to tell me to identify the footballs
fuck off those are soccer balls

So what you're saying is that you have single digit iq and found it difficult to understand a simple game?

>turns out if you play normally and don't just sit there grinding then it both scales the levels and adds new enemies

if I played FF8 normally, the levelscaling would still be active. What part of that are you not getting?

I was wrong it's cap is 41 and Adel's is 46

FF8 can be entirely too difficult if you never understand the Junction system, and entirely too broken if you do. There is no middle ground in FF8. No middling difficulty, unless you just force it.

The level scaling d o e s n o t m a t t e r if you play it normally. What part of that are YOU not getting?

>The level scaling d o e s n o t m a t t e r if you play it normally

it does matter IF YOU ARE NEVER AWARE OF IT

Not entirely true. Even if you have mastered the junction system (making a lot of repeat plays a joke), the second you cross into the third scaling threshold for whatever you're fighting it gets harder.

If you don't waste real world time drawing magic you can't possibly get access to kinetically everything but GF fights (excluding cerberus) are actually challenging. Ultimecia is the exception if you use Aura but played straight if you don't, since she can just randomly break your friggin junctioned magic.

I love it right up until disc 3. Its mechanics are broken and stupid as fuck, but it's just such a goddamn comfy game. I start to replay it every now and then just to play Triple Triad, but I always get tired of the game as soon as I finish all the side quests, before going off to Ultimecia's castle.
I've never even finished it.

I think the sacrifice of stats for using magic is a cool and underused mechanic in games. It is the only jrpg I've played that I've been able to do playthroughs where I actually played it very differently strategy wise than the last time. And I have no issues with making the game harder by grinding and leveling, I enjoy difficult battles. I autistically love watching my stats and numbers increase even if its not doing much. Idk why.

This game is the best in regards to atmosphere/music so I have enjoyed every play through, so I've min/maxed/broke/balanced this game and it fun eveytime

I don't like FF8's Junction system, but level scaling is the least of the game's problems if you just sit down and actually understand how to properly Junction magic. I never ran from any normal enemies or avoided normal battles, and I wound up competing the game.

You don't even have to sit around a draw for a lot of magic. You can create magic from a lot of items using that one GF ability and playing Triple Triad.

The game is entirely too easy if you understand the system it so painstakingly shoves down your throat for the first few hours.

The junction system is not the only problem though.
We have the most broken limit break system ever, with instant kill moves that can be used over and over again, as long as you are low life.
Quistis makes even Squall look like a chump outside of boss battles with her bullshit.

it's not as terrible as people make it out to be but it's also really not that great either

like no it didn't kill my dog and rape my sister but i'm certainly not fucking playing it again

Definitely not impossible. I leveled all my characters to max after I got the Ragnarok in my first playthrough. It made everything much more difficult but I still finished without cheating. Only way I beat the final boss though was through constant use of Invincible Moon.

You don't even have to be low life. There's a late-game magic spell that makes it easier to use Limits.

>triple triad
That's an entirely different beat altogether
m-stones scale with your level so you're not making ridiculous things early. You will be able to make 99 zombies for everybody and 99 curagas for everybody fairly early but junctioning each characters specific best magic to their respective slots as well as unlocking the skills and GFs to do so are all things that happen over the course of the game.

By the time you get into the final tier of stone from entering the 3rd scaling range enemies will stonewall you if you don't have vit and spi junctioned into

>but level scaling is the least of the game's problems if you just sit down and actually understand how to properly Junction magic

I know how. The problem was that now knowing that levelscaling existed in VIII meant I didn't know that the enemies had better spells I could draw from them.

So on my first run was basically me with the most basic of spells junctioned.

also, the "lol Cloud is emo!!!" meme never made sense to me because Squall is infinitely more of an emo piece of shit in FF8 than Cloud ever was in FF7

Squall ends up becoming expressive at the end of the game. Cloud goes on to have survivor guilt.

Cloud's really only emo in Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts

KH was particularly weird because it's almost like Squall and Cloud swapped personalities

>Squall ends up becoming expressive at the end of the game

after the worst written romance of a JRPG at that time where he made a sudden 180 shift to his personality

All you need is 99 Waters Junctioned to Squall's Strength stat and you're set until that point of the game, and you can get those within the first hour of the game, and by then you should be well stocked with most magics to be able to overpower all your enemies regardless of tier.

Triple Triad is broken, because Square decided that one of the NPCs in Balamb Garden should carry high level cards that can be morphed into those GF ability learners and super spells like ultima, earthquake, and hastage.
The game can be broken within the first couple hours.

his character arc is a lot less of an asspull than that romance. God I still hate Rinoa.

Waters are only good for the first tier of scaling and nowhere else. If you entered the 15 and up threshold you best have upgraded to firas or zombies or you're in trouble.

No arguments there. I think the only thing that comes remotely close is 9 and you still have to wait till the end of disc 1 to crack the game wide open and overlevel the rest of it by killing some dragons

I don't think that Squall is emo. He suffers from apathy.

Otherwise he wouldn't be so capable. He just simply doesn't give a fuck about anything until he meets Rinoa.

Cloud was never emo, even after he takes the mako dip, the first thing he does after getting out of the coma, was give a inspirational speech about staying alive and finding out what you should fight for in the world.

No, he grew up and realized that the overrated first babbys fantasy is not really better than the patrician VIII.

It still shocks me that people think the memory loss of all things is an asspull

"Squall is an emo" meme doesn't make any sense either. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't "emo" refer to character that is overly emotional and constantly expresses those emotions? Well, Squall shows very little emotion and often goes his way to avoid bothering other people with his bullshit. Doesn't that make Squall more of an anti-emo?

I like to think of Squall and the rest as just some people dealing with the slow fog and erasure of their memories in their own unique way. Squall broods, Selphie is overly chipper, Zell acts out, Quistis instructs/bosses, Seifer bullies

I remember playing FFVIII for the first time in ages back in 2010, without thinking too much or looking up exploits I grinded T-Rexuars in the training centre for dino bones, refined them for quakes and became overpowered before I went to Timber. Things like this are why people hate the game, because it's too easy to exploit, even without card mod. I still like the game however but play it mostly because it is the comfiest FF, the music/atmosphere are both god tier. Shame in disc 4 it takes that away from you.

Yeah forgetting years of your childhood isn't an asspull.